But despite the cruelly timed reminder of what might have been if Cairn hadn’t decided to sell down its interest in the firm to Vedanta Resources last year for around $8.5 billion, the company is resolutely locked onto a new course.

However, with its summer exploration campaign offshore Greenland drawing to a close, what it decides to do with the cash soon to be burning a hole in its pocket will be key to its future. Cairn India–spun out of the same Rajasthan assets that transformed the Edinburgh-based explorer’s fortunes overnight when it discovered 3.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent there in 2004–has been relegated to a supporting role in the Cairn Energy story following the divestment, which is still awaiting final government approval .

Although Cairn will retain a 22% stake in the business, it decided to peg its future on one of the biggest–and riskiest–exploration prizes in the world, the huge oil and gas fields reservoirs believed to lurk offshore Greenland.

Absent the benefit of hindsight, the decision made more sense at the time: swapping the political and regulatory uncertainty that came with operating in India for the riskier, but potentially far more lucrative opportunities of Greenland didn’t seem a bad bet.

But two years of unsuccessful prospecting in Greenland (this year’s campaign is not yet over and may yet yield a commercial discovery) at a cost of $600 million a year mean that Cairn will now have to look elsewhere for growth–and the fresh reserves that will underpin it.

Although Cairn has spoken of plans to open a new frontier in the eastern Mediterranean, it wasn’t the kind of authoritative exploration move many investors would have been hoping for. The area is highly prospective and not the sort of play to pin a future growth strategy on.

So with Greenland not really going places and India now a minority interest in the portfolio, how is Cairn planning to keep shareholders happy?

The smart money could be on short term M&A, given that it’s the quickest and surest way to add acreage to a company’s reserves short of making a major discovery of its own. Importantly, with the proceeds of the Cairn India sale to come, the company will be cash rich, keeping a beady eye on a mid-level exploration sector currently suffering from poor valuations and a funding squeeze likely to make for a few distressed sellers.

Royal Bank of Scotland said in a note Monday it sees upstream transactions as the most likely driver of sentiment and share price as Cairn tries to diversify away from Greenland. With the exploration and production sector (excepting Tullow Oil) down 33% so far this year as investors shed riskier stocks, there is certainly opportunity, while Cairn’s needs as referenced above provide the motive. Watch this space.

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